


The Problem with Painting

by Diaphenia



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: F/M, Gen, Mystery, Trains, promptsinpanem
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-22
Updated: 2012-08-22
Packaged: 2017-11-12 16:54:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,877
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/493555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Diaphenia/pseuds/Diaphenia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peeta solves a mystery on a train</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Problem with Painting

**Author's Note:**

> A big thanks to Tigers24 for looking this over for me!
> 
> For the PromptinPanem tumblr prompt: 
> 
> The Victory Tour: “It’s like a road trip, but not fun, with nights on the train spent wrapped in each others arms.”  
> “Oh, and Effie.”

“You’re going to die, boy,” Haymitch said, twirling his glass so the ice clinked. “She’s going to murder you.”  
  
Peeta Mellark was in deep shit.   
  
He took a moment to recognize that he’d spent most of his life in deep shit, but this time—this was special.   
  
He was on the trainride to hell, and his star-crossed lover—who he had an uneasy friendship with—was going to be livid. And she was armed.   
  
“Do you think she’ll understand that it’s a mistake?” Peeta asked, flinching.   
  
“I think she’ll understand that you’re sleeping alone from now on,” Haymitch said with a grin. “It might not be too late, if you can find it first. Too bad she’s the tracker and you’re just a merchant kid.”  
  
***  
  
Peeta loved painting. He’d spent his life sketching—rubbing charcoal on the brick of the bakery, or running his pencil over the back of his school papers. Despite the crude tools, he always managed to create beauty. Beauty that was, and beauty that could be, one day in the future.   
  
Now, he had the professional supplies to bring to life all the things in his head. Unfortunately, most of the things in his head were horrifying. The paintings he made focused almost exclusively on the things he’d seen at the Games. From the time he returned to District 12, he’d spent his nights awake, trying to get the exact way the blood poisoning bloomed down his knee, or the arch of Marvel’s eyebrows as he suggested setting up traps, or the way the nightlock juice colored his hands even as he dodged the muttations.   
  
But he’d apologized to Katniss, and they had a tentative friendship. The cameras caught every kiss and caress, but only those on the train knew that the two of them spent every night wrapped together.   
  
And his paintings were—if not  _cheery_ , much more optimistic since then. Effie had been tight-lipped when she discovered Peeta’d turned an empty train car into an art studio, but Portia had been quick to point out that his paintings were going to be a hot commodity in the Capitol. Effie had sighed, and Peeta had a space to paint alone.   
He churned out more disturbing scenes. He couldn’t paint what happened in 11, but he could paint what he’d only seen on screens; Rue, cradled by Katniss, and Thresh’s skull, visible when Cato finally tired of desecrating his corpse.   
  
One night, Katniss screamed, and Peeta went to comfort her, and spent the night holding her. After that, he didn’t get as many chances to paint.   
  
Then one afternoon, a few days in to their new sleeping arrangement, he’d painted something that had nothing  _(and everything)_  to do with the arena.   
  
He had every intention of repainting it after lunch, before the District 7 banquet, but he’d gotten pulled away, and afterwards Katniss waited for him in her room—she never invited him in, exactly, but she would sit on her bed and stare at the door and she’d never get under the covers until he showed up—and when he went into the studio the next morning, it was gone.   
  
He looked everywhere, getting increasingly frantic, flinging blank canvasses and half-finished drawings around the room, looking behind the lush curtains and the under the molded seating that snaked around the car.   
  
It was  _gone_ .   
  
She was going to riddle him with arrows.   
  
  
***  
  
 _Eating in the arena with the Careers hadn’t been half this stressful_ , Peeta thought.   
  
Effie, bless her, had no idea what was going on over the lunch table. “Now, though, she has a golden arrow tattooed on her arm in honor of your Games, you realize this, next to the knife, and she asked me what I thought of—“  
  
Haymitch caught Peeta’s eye, and, whiskey still in hand, cocked an invisible arrow at Peeta. As Peeta’d actually  _had_  an arrow pointed at his heart months ago, he wasn’t amused, and gave a slight strangled cry.   
  
Cinna caught the noise and glowered at him. This wasn’t the first time, and as she had before, Portia caught it and smoothed her hand over Cinna’s forearm. She sent Peeta a sympathetic smile before leaning over to whisper something in Cinna’s ear. Cinna nodded, but practically sawed his pork to bits.   
  
When he’d told Portia, she’d been supportive.  _It wasn’t his fault_ , she’d insisted.  _It could happen to anyone._  Then she brought him to Cinna, who clearly thought it was entirely Peeta’s fault. Cinna had fixed an angry look on Peeta till Portia had pulled Cinna aside. Cinna had scowled the entire time, murmuring about how Katniss had to be  _focused_ ,  _unstressed_ , and  _how could Peeta screw this up?_  
  
Haymitch, meanwhile, thought the whole problem was hilarious, and had spent most of lunch acting like he was going to tell Katniss.   
  
No one told Effie, of course.   
  
Katniss was sullen, but Peeta couldn’t tell what that meant. She was answering direct questions from Effie (‘that’s great,’ ‘absolutely,’ and ‘I’m sure you wore it better’) but her face was the same it’d been since her father had passed, the same as when they won the Games, the same as when they’d had lunch the day before.  _Did she know?_  Peeta wondered.  _Was she mad?_   
  
“When do we get to Two?” Katniss asked suddenly, interrupting Effie’s story.  
  
“Tomorrow,” Effie answered, her apparent pleasure that Katniss was taking an interest in the schedule overshadowing her irritation at the social breach.   
  
“They’re going to make you pose with your bow for the cameras,” Cinna said, gesturing with his knife.  
  
“Yeah, they love a good  _picture_ ,” Haymitch said, raising an eyebrow at Peeta. “How are you dressing our young victors there?”  
  
Portia was slow to answer. Peeta kicked her lightly under the table using his good leg, and his designer was so startled she banged her knee into the table in surprise.   
  
Her drink fell over, and several Avoxes swarmed them, cleaning the table cloth. Though it was a long shot, Peeta watched their hands, checking for stray damp paint.   
  
“Gold,” Portia said, once the table was clean again. “And the rest of us are going to have some gold accents to compliment them.”  
  
“Yes, we’re going to support them,” Cinna said. He shot Haymitch a look. “No matter what ridiculous things come up in the meantime.”  
  
Haymitch snorted. Effie and Katniss both shot him angry looks. They both furrowed their brows identically, Peeta noticed.  
  
“Don’t glare at  _me_ ,” Haymitch said. “I’m not the one who—“  
  
“Oh no!” Peeta yelled. Everyone turned to him, and he scrambled to explain himself. “I thought I got sauce on my sweater.”  
  
Everyone clearly thought he was an idiot, but at least they changed the topic.   
  
***  
  
“Peeta, can you follow me?” Effie said after lunch. “You’re free to go, Katniss.”  
  
Katniss squeezed his hand but didn’t hesitate to leave.   
  
Peeta hadn’t ever thought about Effie’s train car, but it was impossibly sunny and lavishly decorated. Given the much sparser nature of his cabin, he wondered if she owned the rest of the furnishings. Were these things going back to her apartment, somewhere in the Capitol, when the tour was over, or were they an award for a job well done? She’d gotten them to the Games on time. Maybe that merited velvet. He sat on a buttery yellow silk chair and waited.   
  
Effie stood in front of an ornate desk, tapping her foot. “I don’t know what you’ve learned in that district of yours, young man, but this is inappropriate.” She reached over and pulled up his painting. “What were you thinking?”  
  
Relief courses through his veins. Effie had it! Katniss didn’t. Wait—but  _Effie had it._  That wasn’t good.   
  
If there was one thing Peeta had gotten practice at in his life, it was apologizing, so he started on that and kept going until Effie looked satisfied.   
  
“There, there,” she said, patting his hand somewhere around the third round of referring to his moral failings. “You’re going to paint this over this afternoon, and we needn’t ever discuss it. Now, Peeta, we have something else to talk about. I’d be remiss if I didn’t talk to you about sex.”  
  
He chocked. “We’re not—“  
  
“You clearly are,” she interrupted smoothly. Before he could fully process her etiquette breach, she continued. “And I want to know you’re being safe.” She opened a drawer and pulled out a box. “Do you know how to put these on?”  
  
He shook his head. District 12 wasn’t exactly a bastion of inexpensive birth control. He knew what condoms were, but had never seen one himself.   
  
“Then we’re going to practice.”  
  
Peeta felt a little lightheaded, until Effie reached in the same drawer and pulled out a long green vegetable.   
  
Twenty-five minutes later, Peeta felt confident about his ability to put on a condom, even in the dark, though he felt less that adequate about his… personal dimensions, as it were.   
  
“What kind of sex education do they teach at your schools out there?” she asked, frowning at him.   
  
“We don’t really talk about it,” Peeta answered. Effie looked so distraught he added, “We learn a lot about coal.”  
  
“I can’t have you traipsing about clueless,” she said. “Katniss deserves better.”  
  
“I’m not  _clueless_ . I have brothers,” Peeta said.   
  
“Teenagers themselves,” Effie said, waving a hand dismissively. “I saw those interviews. No, I’m going to teach you the things we learned in the Capitol.”  
  
 _I’ll be sure to pass on that information to Gale when we get home_ , Peeta thought. Though if local rumors held true, he didn’t need additional assistance.   
  
Effie pressed some buttons on her remote and pulled up a 3-D image of a nude woman. “First, we’re going to discuss  _erogenous zones_ !”  
  
***  
  
Peeta was almost to his make-shift studio when Katniss appeared, quiet as anything. One moment, he was within the sight of the door, and the next she was in front of him, reaching for the wrapped painting in his hands.   
  
 _So close_ , he thought, bracing himself for the yelling that was sure to follow.   
  
“This is good,” she said, studying the painting. “I like this.”  
  
Peeta looked over at her, and the almost-smile that played on her lips. She touched the painted version of herself. “Look at us, we look so peaceful,” she added.  
  
The painting had the two of them wrapped up her bed together, just waking up. The morning sun highlighted her tousled hair, which was always wild and tangled before she braided it. And his hair was similarly messy, though triumph of his portrait was the look of adoration on his face—and lust, too, which was so evident in the painting that even Katniss had to see it.   
  
“I’m glad you like it,” Peeta ventured cautiously.   
  
“Can I have it?” she asked, and Peeta held his breath for a moment in sheer excitement.  
  
“Of course, Katniss, anything you want,” he said, wondering briefly how many times he could say that sentence in his lifetime.   
  
“Thank you,” she said, holding his gaze for a moment. Then she impulsively kissed his cheek. Peeta smiled and felt more hopeful than he had in ages.   
  
Katniss held the painting to her chest and took off down the hall. “Snow is going to love this!”


End file.
